Mac apps have gotten away from being highly customizable, sticking instead to a curated set of defaults that often lean towards clutter-free interfaces like most writing apps, or the skeuomorphic designs Apple prefers today. But the highly customizable apps aren’t gone completely.

Today, we’ve had the chance to interview the team behind Calendar Plus, a highly customizable calendar app for the Mac that’s been surprisingly popular on the App Store. Read on to hear their thoughts about developing for the Mac and designing customizable apps. (more…)

This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on April 14th, 2011.

Mac OS X has a very high standard of interface design, more so than most other operating systems. This is thanks to designers to work extremely hard to make your software work the way you want it to. They may spend hours perfecting a single icon that you will use once and ignore – but it’s worth it.

Dmitry Novikov is a Russian designer who works for MacPaw, the software company that has brought you beautiful apps such as MacHider, Ensoul, and a personal favourite of mine that I couldn’t live without, CleanMyMac. Today, we’ll be talking to him about his processes, design decisions, and much more.

You don’t have to go far to see work from Mike Lee, in fact there’s a decent chance you’ve got some of his work already on your devices. Mike (or as he likes to call himself, ‘the world’s toughest programmer’) has been involved with the development of Delicious Library, the official Obama ’08 application and even the Apple mobile store app.

This man knows his software and rather than continuing along this very successful path, he decided it was time to give back to the developer community and he created Appsterdam – a community built for creating applications. Read on to see Mike’s story and how it all started for him.

Acrylic Software is known for their beautiful and useful apps for the Mac and iOS. We got a chance to speak with Dustin MacDonald, the company’s Founder, Designer & Engineer. In our interview, we touched on a number of topics ranging from the history of Acrylic Software to their view on the Mac App Store and the interoperability between Mac OS X and iOS.

In today’s interview, we’ll be speaking with Keith Blount – the writer and developer behind the phenomenally successful Scrivener. Created by the Literature & Latte team, Scrivener is a fantastic application for writers of all types, helping you organise your ideas and produce a piece of work to be proud of.

Keith will be talking about the Literature & Latte team, how Scrivener came about, giving back to the developer community, and sharing a few fascinating, high-profile examples of people using the app.

Today’s interview is with Kirill Zorin, the developer behind Catpig Studios. The company is well-known for their excellent app – Radium – a menu bar radio player that supports a variety of different services.

We’ll be talking about the origin of the company, a typical work day, the benefits of developing a single app, how the Mac App Store is affecting developers, and hearing how the company came to be called “Catpig”!

The role of the interface designer is not one that should be taken lightly – Without a great interface, chances are that you wouldn’t be using the apps you currently are. If the Safari address bar was hot pink and created in MS Paint, would you still use it? Probably not.

Luckily, it isn’t, and you can use your Mac in pleasure, thanks to countless UI designers working tirelessly to perfect their application designs.

There are numerous wonderful mail clients for Mac OS X, and everybody has their own preference, for whatever reason. However, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody who doesn’t marvel at the Sparrow interface – It really is something else.

Today, we’ll be chatting to Sparrow’s designer, Jean-Marc Denis, about his work, inspirations, and the interface design scene.

Today’s interview is with Alykhan Jetha (“AJ”), the CEO of Marketcircle. Developers of popular applications Billings and Daylite, Marketcircle has a long-standing track record as a top-notch Mac software development company.

In today’s interview, we’ll be talking about the Marketcircle team, inspiration for their products, the Mac App Store, and some very interesting updates currently in the pipeline for Billings.

So often, we marvel at the quality of interface design on OS X – the clean, simple layouts, and how you know exactly how to use an app when you first use it. But do you ever stop and think about why this is?

It doesn’t just happen by accident. There are UI designers working tirelessly to make an app look and feel absolutely perfect.

Chris Downer is the UI designer for Realmac Software, the company behind such OS X greats as LittleSnapper, Courier and Rapidweaver. Today, we’ll be talking to Chris about his methods, inspiration and much more.

Today’s interview is with Gedeon Maheux, Principal / Designer at the Iconfactory team. World-renowned for their design work, the Iconfactory offer thousands of free icons, Mac and iOS software, royalty-free stock icons, and much more.

We’ll be talking about the history of the Iconfactory, why the company started developing software, how Gedeon believes this has changed their identity, the Twitter client ecosystem, and hearing about a brand new application called “Flare”!